About Vaslav

Nijinsky
- Born on March 12 1890 at Kiev, Ukraine.
- He was Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of
Polish descent
- Vaslav Nijinsky was celebrated for his spectacular
leaps and sensitive interpretations
- At the age of 9, he joined the Imperial Ballet School in
St Petersburg , the pre-eminent ballet school in the
world.
- In 1907 he graduated and became a member of the Imperial ballet starting
at the rank of coryphe instead of in the corps de ballet, already taking
starring roles.
- The choreographer and dancer Bronislava Nijinska was his sister and
worked with him much of his career.
- In 1900, he joined the Imperial Ballet School, where he studied under Enrico
Cecchetti, and Nicholas Legat.
-

At only 18 years old he was given a string of leads. In 1910, a fellow

Imperial Ballet dancer, Mathilde Kschessinskaya, selected Nijinsky to dance
in a revival of Marius Petipa's Le Talisman, during which Nijinsky created a
sensation in the role of the Wind God Vayou.

- In 1909 he joined the Ballets Russes, a new ballet company started by

Sergei Diaghilev which planned to show Russian ballets in Paris, where
productions of the quality staged by the Imperial ballet simply did not exist.
- In 1912 Nijinsky began choreographing his own ballets, including L'aprsmidi d'un faune (1912), Jeux (1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916).
- Nijinsky became increasingly mentally unstable with the stresses of having
to manage tours himself and deprived of opportunities to dance, which had
always been his total obsession.